Author(s)

R. Barelkowski

Abstract

This paper discusses the issues of sustainability in the context of the relationship between the city and suburban areas. As a critical contribution, it focuses on a brief diagnosis of the current quality of urban space, an interpretation of the notion of sustainability, factors determining the connection between suburbs and the city, and, last but not least, possible key elements to be acknowledged in strategies of urban development. The work aims to supplement the perception of problems of local-scale planning, attempting to evaluate difficult choices to be made in order to conform to the conditions of sustainability. Keywords: suburban areas, urban development, sustainable city, planning strategies. 1 Introduction There was a time when the centre of a city determined its future. Vital areas of entrepreneurial developments provided fertile ground to locate places which absorb social and cultural life. Significance and prestige were inextricably associated with particular, central spatial locations within cities, and it was the existing space of the city that determined the potential of the place. Since that time the situation has drastically changed, erasing the importance of the continuity of space manifested in attempts to develop urban structures in an evolutionary and harmonious way. Using this kind of generalization a variety of cases may be included even in the 19th century Paris was being transformed by Haussmann in an uncompromised manner as the old order was being replaced intentionally by the new one [1, pp. 717–723 ]. At the time of the Paris public works however, a coincidence of emerging planning issues, the planning profession (regardless of its title which is so distant from contemporary concepts of urban design and town planning) and the escalation of dynamic processes within large urban agglomerations has laid the

Keywords

suburban areas, urban development, sustainable city, planning strategies.